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Intel's Atom Processor Won't Solve UMPC Confusion

Call it Silverthorne, call it Atom, but whatever Intel calls it, the company hasn't erased the confusion caused by its desire to popularize a new category of handheld portables variously called Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) or Ultramobile PCs (UMPCs). The real question is, do consumers want these things? The answer: Mostly, only the early adopters.

Personally, I think it'd be a lot simpler if Intel would publish a decoder chart each time it announces a new chip or brand name. Because I guarantee you, very few folks realize that Atom is the very same processor previously code-named Silverthorne, which Intel talked about in detail in April, 2007, when it discussed its Ultra-Mobile PC vision at its Developer Forum in Beijing.

Still fewer know that Atom/Silverthorne didn't emerge fully formed in a vacuum, but is really a successor to the A100 and A110 processors (aka McCaslin), which appear in a bunch of UMPCs you can actually buy today. These include things like the HTC Shift, which is a smartphone-like device, even though it's a computer, not a phone. (See my post from last month, With HTC Shift, Intel's UMPC Is Finally Real.)

Therein lies the rub, and the big challenge for Intel. People want PCs. (Mostly, they want laptops, not desktops, which you would think would augur well for ever-lighter handhelds.) Consumers also covet smartphones, in the form of BlackBerrys and iPhones.

But do they want standalone handheld computers, little bitty PCs which they'd carry alongside their smartphone and use to browse the Web? Not so much. Why would they? That's what iPhones are for.

Keep in mind that the iPhone and its ilk are only going to get more powerful. This'll make it an even tougher row to hoe for computing handhelds (UMPCs, mobile Internet devices, whatever you call them).

Hey, I love lightweights like the OQO Model 2, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that UMPCs are going to become a laptop-displacing category.

Which undoubtedly is not good news for Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who has staked his tenure pushing Intel beyond its narrow reliance on selling PC processors. Intel tried that strategy with communications chips, and ended up selling off the division in 2006 for $600 million. I'm not saying Intel's going to be selling off anything here, but I am saying that UMPCs aren't the fork in the road on the way to the future of computing.

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